Welcome to the Library of Personal Trade Secrets

Do you have some little secret tricks you use that make you and your team more effective? Do you wish you could know what secret tricks others have? Here's a way to share your secrets without risk. To become a member, all you have to do is contribute a personal trade secret.

In whatever role you play, you have and use "personal trade secrets." For instance, if you travel by air to make a presentation, you might carry with you a backup copy of the presentation on CD, in addition to the one on your laptop, in case your laptop dies. Or maybe you call ahead to purchasing and ask for help in filling out a req, to make sure it goes through on greased rails. Or maybe you tend carefully a personal relationship with one of your peers, to your mutual benefit.

These invisible activities make you more effective. They help the teams you belong to — or lead — perform at higher levels, and they make your company more competitive.

Note to link spammers: Contributions submitted on this form are all reviewed by me. Links to or mentions of Web sites offering pharmaceuticals, airline tickets, payday loans, or other favored topics of spammers will cause me to classify your contribution as spam, and it will be discarded.By contributing a description of one of your personal trade secrets you'll gain access to the contributions of others. If your contribution is accepted, you'll receive a user ID and password to give you access to the library we've accumulated here.

To ensure your safety, your contribution is completely anonymous. I do require your email address, to help me resolve any questions or ambiguities, but these are rare. I won't add your email address to my database, and you'll receive no ads or solicitations from me as a consequence of making a contribution.

Tips can be references to useful books or articles, they can be advice from others, or they can be original to you. Check out some samples from the collection.

Although I personally review all submissions, my purpose is simply to screen out prank submissions and duplications. I edit the contributions only for appropriateness for the collection and for consistency of style. I wouldn't necessarily adopt any of them myself — you'll have to judge what fits for you. Remember that even if you don't adopt one of these personal trade secrets, it can be helpful to know what some people out there are up to.

What about fees?

Access to The Library of Personal Trade Secrets is absolutely free — for now. I'll keep it free for as long as I can. If a fee ever becomes necessary, Charter Contributors (like yourself) will receive a free subscription for a limited time, in recognition of your founding contributions.

Offer a Personal Trade Secret

To contribute to the Library, fill out this form and click "Submit". All fields are optional except "Email", "Contribution", and "Headline". You'll receive a message thanking you for your contribution, and within a day or so, you'll receive a password that will let you view the entire collection.

First name
Last name
Title
Company
Contribution Please limit your contribution to 200 words or so.
 
Headline 60 characters or fewer — a brief summary
 
Category
Email
Re-enter Email Address
Comments & suggestions Comment on this facility, or make a suggestion for improvements. Is it useful? How could it be more useful? Were you looking for a category you couldn't find?
 
Please answer this question Please forgive me, but I have to ask this question to filter out robotic spammers:

How many sides (total) do two squares and one hexagon have?
Use numeric characters only: 0-9.

Ask me a different question, please.

        Go to top  Top

Follow Rick

Send email or subscribe to one of my newsletters Follow me at LinkedIn Follow me at X, or share a tweet Subscribe to RSS feeds Subscribe to RSS feeds
The message of Point Lookout is unique. Help get the message out. Please donate to help keep Point Lookout available for free to everyone.
Technical Debt for Policymakers BlogMy blog, Technical Debt for Policymakers, offers resources, insights, and conversations of interest to policymakers who are concerned with managing technical debt within their organizations. Get the millstone of technical debt off the neck of your organization!
Support
Point Lookout by
starting your Amazon search here
When you start here, a part of every purchase you make goes to support Point Lookout, at no cost to you.
Search Now:
303 Secrets of Workplace PoliticsIs every other day a tense, anxious, angry misery as you watch people around you, who couldn't even think their way through a game of Jacks, win at workplace politics and steal the credit and glory for just about everyone's best work including yours? Read 303 Secrets of Workplace Politics!
Go For It: Sometimes It's Easier If You RunBad boss, long commute, troubling ethical questions, hateful colleague? Learn what we can do when we love the work but not the job.
101 Tips for Effective MeetingsLearn how to make meetings more productive — and more rare.
Ebooks, booklets and tip books on project management, conflict, writing email, effective meetings and more.
Comprehensive collection of all e-books and e-bookletsSave a bundle and even more important save time! Order the Combo Package and download all ebooks and tips books at once.
If your teams don't yet consistently achieve state-of-the-art teamwork, check out this catalog. Help is just a few clicks/taps away!